The Balham Group;: How British Trotskyism began

by Reginald Groves

111 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[BROM STONKER · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Our time was taken almost exclusively by our party work-the frequent parades and gatherings under a variety of banners; the sale of party papers; union branch, party group, committee and fraction meetings; as well as, for some, a deal of speaking, lecturing and writing. Opposition to aspects of party policies grew out of our party work and experience, and was intended as a contribution to the discussion and formulation of policy. We were not an organised group but close friends who talked things over, and who individually expressed our views openly to our party comrades."

So began the history of Trotskyism in British, for all its strengths and its many weaknesses: a small group of ardent young communist activists, members of the Communist Party and the Communist International, growing increasingly alarmed at the bureaucratisation taking place around them but fighting as hard as they could to overturn it. A tiny and forgotten chapter of history, but Groves really brings out the human element, the real people who dedicated their lives to fighting for socialism.

People like the Stewart Purkis ("bubbling with humour, yet in deadly earnest about the socialism which he lived as well as preached"), Billy Williams ("an omniverous reader, hard hitting in debate and in serious conversation, a good mixer but intolerant of the pompous, the slothful and the shoddy") and Bert Field ("affable, inarticulate, using his pipe to cover retreat from the more complicated controversies, and probably wiser than any of us"), all three of them railway workers. Or Harry Sara, who had visited Russia shortly after the revolution, "incisive, informed in debate and discussion, brought much to us in the way of knowledge of Marxism, socialist theory and labour history," Steve Dowdall ("a tiler-bricklayer and founder member of the party"), Nell Dowdall and her sister Daisy ("both of the Tailor and Garment Workers' Union, and active members of the party).

From this small group of friends and comrades - who used to meet "at the Express Dairy teashop close to Euston station" and "lunched each day on bread, cheese and coffee [...] where books, politics and party affairs were talked about, often irreverently and sometimes hilariously" - from them, among a handful of others, emerged all those groups which would cast such long shadows over socialism internationally as a whole - for better or worse - encompassing untold thousands of dedicated and self-sacrificing activists over the past century, whose histories and struggles are also likewise largely lost to time.

The content of this book is largely political, describing the debates that raged on in the CBGB at the time, but a few other passages struck me as particularly poetic:

"Busy indeed was the life in those times of the Communist Party member, and we were as busy as any. But there were occasional summer afternoons at cricket, and some Saturday or Friday nights when we walked through the crowded New Cut market with its stalls, its loquacious stallholders and its roaring naphthalene flares, to the Waterloo Road and the Old Vic, queued and paid five pence and climbed the stairs to the gallery; and saw our Shakespeare staged by Harcourt Williams and spoken by a superb company closer to the original text, pace and style than any before or since. And as we came out under the stars, into the rain-washed streets, odd words some-times lingered in the mind as strangely apt to our party activities."

An even more melancholic passage counterposes a footnote of a footnote of an event, a tiny victory that the group had over the Stalinists, post-expulsion - seeking to kick them out of a grassroots anti-war committee they had built - with events happening globally:

"The invaders, who built nothing and destroyed what others built, were repulsed again, their resolution defeated. A small incident, but as was the way of such things, we were elated as we walked home through the chill night air. Well might we have had misgivings had we known how fateful that night was to be:
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars. Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels.
For on that night, the German Reichstag was set on fire..."

[Gilly Singh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The memoir is an interesting read in that it gives a decent picture of what it was like inside the CPGB in the late 1920's through the process of Stalinisation and the nascent oppositionism which took some time to develop into an organised tendency. Whilst it is an interesting historical document it also highlights many of the mistakes of The Balham Group, including their indecisiveness on organisational matters and misunderstanding of the important political and theoretical questions being discussed by the International Left Opposition. Reg Groves himself also shows the pessimism of that layer in the movement of the time who were disorientated by defeat after defeat and a complex international situation.

If you're interested in the intricacies of the Communist Movement of the time, and particularly in Trotskyist History in the UK, this is worth reading. Specially considering its small size (100 pages).

Otherwise it is just a curious memoir, a footnote to great events to come.

[Olive Rickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some interesting tidbits about the inner life of the CPGB following 1926 at a time where it proved incapable of growing or dealing with the issues of the day namely national government and the menace of fascism.

Groves is a bit empirical remarks that he found the debates in the ILO conference obtuse and unrelated to the questions of the day. Political clarification above all makes one capable of building a revolutionary party.

The documents produced by this group were interesting to read too